


The Faces of Eve

by Margo_Kim



Category: Mirrormask (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 23:52:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/143056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Margo_Kim/pseuds/Margo_Kim
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life has a tendency to continue, even after the remarkable. Helena finally faces real life. "She left the pictures up. She meant them to stay forever. Nan threw them away when she moved out, and once they were crumpled up in the trash, Helena couldn’t remember for the life of her why she’d wanted to save them."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Faces of Eve

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whatimages](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatimages/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! I hope this is close to what you had in mind.

Once upon a time, there was a sleeping queen. She woke.

***

The sun was warm on Helena’s skin even as the wind slapped it raw. She was hot and cold, both at once, with the scrape of concrete against her cheek and her father’s voice in the air. Mum was fine. She was fine. They were fine, and the sun would never shine brighter than it did at the moment where she hugged her father that day on the roof.

***

She left the pictures up. She meant them to stay forever. Nan threw them away when she moved out, and once they were crumpled up in the trash, Helena couldn’t remember for the life of her why she’d wanted to save them. “Just dream drawings,” she told her dad as he tried to smooth one out. “They don’t matter.”

She never knew why it felt like a lie. She just knew the wall looked so much cleaner afterwards.

***

Valentine was all natural skill and no discipline. Sometimes it worked out. Sometimes it didn’t. You could never predict which way it was going to go until he was already done and you were left to clean up the debris. Valentine’s act went better when it all went to pot. He was a man whose brains were in his feet. “All the world’s a stage,” her father whispered to her after one particularly suspenseful act where Valentine lost the knives he was supposed to juggle and saved himself by borrowing several audience members’ mobiles. “Valentine is just more improvisational than his fellow actors.

Her mum was less charmed. “He needs to learn. I’ll admit he’s good, but I’d like a bit more dependability.”

“You shouldn’t have started a circus,” Helena said. It came out light and teasing, and her mum laughed. That was new. That was nice.

“You like him,” her mum said. “You teach him.”

They kissed for the first time the night of their first practice. Valentine broke it off. He was, occasionally, capable of restraint, and she had been so young. She stormed back to her trailer red-faced, anger and humiliation so interweaved that she couldn’t pick out the one from the other. She cried herself to sleep, not for the first time or the last.

In the morning, she found an origami flower taped to her door. She wore it all day and when Valentine joined her for dinner, she scooted over on the bench so he could sit down.

***

“I thought he loved me!” she wailed ridiculously loud. Valentine looked panicked, his face contorted with concern.

“Er—”

“He said he loved me!” Helena wiped her tears away with the back of her hand, but they wouldn’t stop coming. “Why are blokes such jerks?”

“Biology, mostly.” Valentine patted her on the shoulder and she jerked away. “Listen,” he said helplessly. “Don’t talk to me about this.”

“Thanks,” she spat. “You’re such a good friend.”

He put up his hands defensively and backed away. “I’m saying, you need to talk to your mum. That’s what mums are for, don’t you know? Well, not my mum, the old bat, but the rest of them, in theory. Especially yours.”

Her shoulders shook and her throat burned from swallowing her sobs. She couldn’t look at him. He put his arm around her again and she leaned into him, breathing him in like that would help. “Trust me. Mums have been solving boy problems since there were boys and mums.”

She shook her head into his shoulder. “She’ll think I’m stupid.”

“Well, yeah. But you are.”

And it shouldn’t have made her laugh, but it did. “Alright,” she said. “You’re off the hook. But she better help.”

She did.

***

Everyone knew that Helena was going to move out, but it still took them by surprise. Her mother cried when she thought no one was around. Her father’d taken to slinging his arm around her while they walked. The specter of “last” loomed over every moment, imbibing the simplest acts like grocery shopping or Sunday morning lazing about with almost unbearable poignancy. When Helena boarded the train alone for the first time, it felt almost like exhaling. Then, her moment of relief done, she turned to the window and waved to her parents until they were out of sight.

***

The dark was darker out in the country. She’d learned that young as the circus wove through the quiet greenery of Britain’s undisturbed bits, on their way from one paycheck to another. But back then she’d travelled with her mum and dad and Eric and George and Pingo and the rest, the ones that stayed with them for years and the ones that drifted with the wind. She had never been alone in the country before, utterly alone, and here she was in a rented house in the moors of Northumberland.

When the lights were on inside and off outside, when she stared out the windows, all she could see was herself. She couldn’t explain the feeling of déjà vu. Eventually, she stopped looking.

***

His name was David, and as Valentine was happy to point out, that name had neither dignity nor style nor even a little bit of romance. To be fair, David didn’t have much of those either. Strange how that didn’t matter when you didn’t care if it mattered. David was a solid shoulder under a stupid jumper. He wanted to be a dentist, for God’s sake. Her parents never understood, but they smiled at the wedding anyway and Helena believed them to be genuine.

“You are incredible,” David whispered to her during their first dance. “I don’t think I’ll ever understand you.”

“I hope you find that charming.” She was only half-teasing.

But he did, and he dipped her just like they’d practiced.

***

Helena Campbell was born Helena Campbell, lived as Helena Campbell, and planned on dying as Helena Campbell. The problem came up with David Morris.

“The Campbell name isn’t going to die out,” he said.

She crossed her arms over her belly. They didn’t fit as well as they used to. “Neither is Morris.”

“Yeah, but...” He rubbed the back of his neck, the way he did when he didn’t want to say what he thought because he thought Helena wouldn’t like it. “I want our kid to be named after me.”

“I want it to be named after me. I don’t see why your name should take precedence.”

“It doesn’t. It just, it means a lot to me.”

That she shouldn’t argue with. She’d kept her last name out of habit and because she couldn’t be bothered to fuss around with the forms. It was a connection to her family, but she had other, more tangible connections—her father’s laugh, her mother’s worry lines, her nan’s ability to lose the simplest of objects.

(Once she’d found something terribly important, but the thought lasted as long as the sleep in her eyes. She wiped it away as she roused herself from dreams.)

She didn’t need her last name. David did. And compromise was the foundation of marriage.

“It can be Morris,” she said, “but I get to pick the first name.”

David would regret how quickly he nodded at that.

***

Push, they told her, and she pushed and pushed and pushed some more. She pushed out Astoria, the two of them screaming. Looking back, it may have been the only time they were in sync.

“She’s beautiful.” David sounded reverent. Helena could tell from that moment that he’d spoil her rotten. He also sounded slightly delusional. Motherly affection hadn’t made her blind. Astoria was a splotchy, sticky mess with a face like a monkey and a head like a cone. She looked like half-baked bread pulled out too early from the oven. Not that the oven planned on keeping the bread in much longer. This oven was done baking. Helena wondered when her maternal instinct would kick in and she’d love her daughter so much that she’d become blind to her faults.

Looking back, Helena laughed herself silly at that thought.

***

Helena didn’t believe in one true love. She’d had too many loves to believe that one stood above the rest. Hell, her first love was her maid-of-honor at her wedding (“Best man, I’ll thank you to say.”). David won because he was the right man at the right time, and she knew she could be happy with him even when they were grey and cleaved with wrinkles. But that doesn’t mean she thought that he was the only man for whom that was true. She thought that knowledge would inoculate her from wanting.

But Alex almost stopped her heart. “Sorry about that,” he said with a smile she would remember far longer than she should have. “I didn’t mean to run into you.” Then he invited her to coffee.

She’d taken off her wedding ring to shower that morning and forgot to put it back on. She felt naked without the cold band of metal, a feeling that was as exhilarating as it was terrifying. Alex bought her scone that she hadn’t asked for but had eyed hungrily, and she talked with her mouth full. His eyes were the blackest black, dark matter and starlight framed by enviously long lashes. His cheekbones gave him the lean look of a hungry man. He looked quite sharp, in all meanings of the word, but his lips were soft against hers. They kissed with their eyes open as clouds gathered overhead.

“Can I call you?” he said. And the answer was yes, and the answer was no. She wanted him and she didn’t and she needed him and she knew how very, very stupid that was. And he had the darkest eyes she’d ever seen and they didn’t look a thing like David’s. Or Astoria’s.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “But no.”

And that wasn’t that, but it was close enough.

***

“I want a story.” Astoria threw herself into Helena’s lap. Helena scooted her off.

“Mummy’s working right now. She’s working on something really important right now.” When she’d started writing, she hadn’t imagined the finance aspect of freelancing. Even after years of practice, numbers never added up correctly, not on the first try or the second or sometimes even the fifth, even with a calculator in front of her, even with David at her side. They floated around like (startled books) butterflies, and she didn’t have a net to catch them.

“Mummy.”

David could support the house, in theory. Dentistry paid well at any rate, the only concession she’d give to the positives of his job (“It’s just so dull!” “Some of us like dull, Helena.”).

“Mummy.”

Helena didn’t want to rely on him though. The people you needed weren’t always there for you and it was stupid to pretend that you could rely on you. Even the best of friends could turn their back on you.

“Mum—”

“Astoria! I’m working. Go play on your own for a bit, okay?”

It wasn’t the first time she’d said those words, and it wasn’t the last, but this was the time that she’d remember years later when remembering took up the bulk of her time. Astoria was young then, although how young Helena could only guess at. It would be many years before she learned to hide her feelings behind a mask, and so Astoria wore her sadness like a shroud.

Strange, Helena thought, how much they care. Strange how people destroyed and saved each other with the smallest of acts when the person doing it was the right person. Strange how soon they’d both forget.

***

“Once upon a time, there was a princess named Astoria—”

Astoria bounced in her bed. “Named Charlotte!”

“Named Astoria but insisted on Charlotte due to an almost criminal lack of whimsy.” Helena pushed her daughter back down to a more horizontal direction and tucked the blanket tight around her.

Astoria looked up with the big blue eyes that had become the bane of Helena’s mental health. “I like Charlotte.”

“You’ve said so. Now, Princess Charlotte was the most beautiful princess in the land with dark brown hair and light blue eyes. She was so pretty, in fact, an evil sorcerer fell in love with her.”

“Was he really evil?”

“Really. He fed his servant nothing but Brussels sprouts and made them go to bed at eight.”

“That’s not evil!”

“No? I’ll remember you said that next time I try to serve you greens.” Helena leaned back against the wall, ready herself to climb into the bed and dream away. It was hardly fair that sleep was wasted on those who didn’t appreciate it. She reached down and swept Astoria’s bangs out of her eyes and kept sweeping. She hoped the motion would calm one of them. “Alright, what did he do?”

Astoria practically vibrated with energy. “He cast the whole world into darkness.”

Her head paused. “Yes.” She said finally. “That is evil.” The story continued, and Astoria slept, and Helena crawled into her own bed and stared at the ceiling until the shapes in the darkness stopped looking like memories.

***

Sometimes when she dreamed, she didn’t want to wake up because she didn’t know when she’d be back. But then she woke, and when David asked what she’d dreamed about, she had no words.

***

Just as statistics predicted, her father died first. She buried him on a Wednesday with her mother by her side. The pastor had never seen such colorful mourners before. She returned to the same spot a year later to lay her mother to rest. Standing before the fresh dirt, she finally remembered every question she’d ever wanted to ask. Helena let Astoria play in the field while she had a good cry. Then she dried her cheeks, took her daughter’s and her husband’s hands and started the long walk to the train home.

***

When she went to the city—another talk with another agent who hadn’t read her book but told her he knew it better than she did—she passed Alex on the street. Helena didn’t look at him, not when he called her name, not when she felt her ring finger and discovered she’d left her ring at home again. She kept walking until he was gone, and even though she could still picture his smile, it didn’t gnaw quite so badly.

***

“I don’t know why you had to choose Astoria,” her daughter said on her way out the door.

Helena didn’t even bother to look up from the newspaper. “Are you still going on about that?”

“It’s still my name, isn’t it?” Astoria took one last look in the mirror as she mussed her hair into place. “Couldn’t I have been Ann or something?”

Helena flipped to the weather section. “Yes, if you wanted to be dull.” Rain. Again. Always. Honestly, she shouldn’t even bother to check anymore. “What do you think happens to people with names like Ann? They live perfectly happy, average, normal lives. I wasn’t subjected my daughter to that fate.”

“No, you decided that no one should ever pronounce my name right on the first try.”

“Poor baby. Bring an umbrella.”

But Astoria was already out of the door, and Helena would be damned if she was going to chase after her in her pajamas, especially if her quarry couldn’t be bothered to listen the first time around. Let the girl get wet. That was how you learned.

It occurred to her that when she was a fifteen-year-old girl, she would have viewed this as bad parenting. Helena laughed and poured herself anther cup of tea.

***

When it was time for university, Astoria had to go to New York City. Looking at the price, all Helena could think was thank God her daughter was smart and thank God they’d only had the one. But with financial juggling that would have made her parents proud, Astoria went to New York City. The letters came in bursts—three one month, none the next, and five the one after that. They were cheerful and vague. “Things going well here. I miss home. I met a boy. Please send some extra money this month.”

Helena didn’t ever stop worrying, but she got better at ignoring it. She finished her third book, a fantasy books for teens that got quietly ignored on the shelves. They sold enough to keep the publisher happy, though, and the critics—the ones that read it—liked it well enough. So did she. In fact, Mirrormask might be her favorite book she wrote, and it didn’t matter too much that the pubic disagreed. She knew it was good.

Besides, Valentine liked it. That was a first for any of her books.

***

Andre was tall and broad. He filled whatever space he was in and pushed everyone else out of the way. He had a wicked tongue, and Astoria spent as much time laughing as she did flinching when he spoke.

Helena knew they’d be getting married before they did. When the call finally came, she nodded sagely because she knew her daughter couldn’t see.

“I’m so happy for you. He’s a great man. You two will be so happy together. Just wait until your father hears about this, he’ll die. Oh, me? No, sweetie, I had no idea. You’ve knocked me off my feet.”

***

Book signings brought her back to the circus all over again. She’d swapped the leotard for a cardigan (good thing, as her body was decidedly lumpier now) and the crowds stayed calm longer, but the principle was the same. Entertain, distract, dazzle. She could turn the charm on as easily as a faucet. Her readers walked out grateful and giddy. She walked out surer and richer. A win-win by anyone’s definition.

She’d never had a bad signing, not since those first terrible ones where no one had come and she’d sat at the desk with a fixed grin and a dozen unsold copies by her elbow. After that, after she’d reached a level of success that meant there would always be someone, nothing seemed catastrophic.

There were blips, though. Like Jeremy from Ingram who was no more than ten and couldn’t look her in the eye as he handed over her book. Mirrormask. She started. “I was wondering where you got your idea for that,” he said. “Have you gone there too?”

Her hand shook when she signed. She left a splotch of ink after her name that bleed through to the cover page. “It just came to me.” She snapped the book closed and handed it back, but he looked so sad, she paused. “I dreamed it. That’s all.” He took the book silently. “Next.”

***

Astoria beamed at the bundle in her arms. “I don’t think I ever realized how wonderful children were before. Not until I got one of my own.”

Helena laughed. “You’ll learn. Children are your punishment for having been one.”

“Thanks, Mum. That’s comforting.” Astoria shifted Alice. She still didn’t know how to hold her daughter, the right way to cradle her head and scoop your arm around her so she wouldn’t fuss. She’d learn quickly. It was better for her to learn on her own. “What are grandchildren then?”

Oh, what the hell. Helena reached over and moved Astoria’s arms into a better position. “Our reward.”

***

Alice was bright and young. Nowadays, Helena couldn’t claim to be either, but at least she had more thoughts in her head than she’d had before. More space in her house than she knew what to do with. David joined her parents on the hill, and soon she would join David, but until then, she had her books and her thoughts and her grandchild and sometimes even Valentine. Not always—he’d adopted the life of a geriatric itinerant, which surprised no one—but enough.

She remembered things better now, now that so much else had faded. Her life blurred until she could no longer recall what she had invented and what she had experienced. It didn’t matter, though. They’d both shaped her. There was something in her head that wasn’t a memory and wasn’t a dream, but almost like a story that she’d heard when she was too young to understand it but old enough to be changed by it. And it was this thought she turned over as she walked Alice play.

There had been twin cities, light and dark, as opposite as the two sides of a coin and as separate. And there had been two queens. The White Queen and the Black Queen, and their eternal battle.

She’d gotten it wrong though. The facts had gotten all jumbled up in her head. How silly she’d once been, to think that they were two women. They were the same woman. They had always been the same woman, and they hated and loved each other because that is what they had to do.

“We are all both of them,” she said to the gurgling baby. Alice banged a pot contentedly. Give her eighty years or so. She’d understand.

Helena scooped Alice up in her arms and held her against her chest. “Let me tell you a story,” Helena said, “of once upon a time.”

Alice didn’t listen. Helena told it anyway.


End file.
